Day: October 1, 2018

I know I am so late with this but it’s finally time I show you how I put to work all of the goodies that I got in my Amazon Haul!

It has been so much fun being able to do my own nails at home and to have them look just as nice as if I had went to the salon! I have been doing this mainly on my natural nails but I also have gotten some plastic tips that I like to file down and fit to my nails so that I look almost like I have acrylic’s on but they are much easier to remove and cost a lot less!

Disclaimer: I am not a professional nail tech. I bought all of my items from Amazon and after watching quite a few YouTube video’s I feel like I have gotten the hang of doing my own nails. What works for me may not work for you but this is simply to show you how I do my nails at home.

Now for the tutorial!

Normally this time of year I would be doing some fun vampy color with a gold or champagne glitter but I had a wedding I was going to and wanted to keep my nails a little more simple. For this I chose to use my Aimeili gel polish in #018 Sparkle Grapefruit and #019 Cake Pop.

I love the soft pink and the subtle glitter that both of these polishes offer and really make for an elegant and clean set of nails.

To start you will want to have clean dry nails. Here I have already shaped my nails because they are already short and stubby as it is just from ripping and tearing because they have been weak and brittle from having acrylic on for so long. I started out pretty long but they slowly have been getting shorter and shorter because they have been breaking. I am so close to having them fully grown out from when I had acrylic’s on last and then I’m hoping they will strengthen up and be long, pretty and natural. So all in all what I’m trying to say is, don’t judge my stubby little nails!

Next you’ll want to use a file and remove the shinny layer from the nails. By filing the nails you are roughing up the surface so that the polish has something to grip to. With this you want to be really careful not to go to far because then you can cause damage to your nail plate. I just try to make sure I have scuffed up the whole area on my nail. After I have scuffed them up I also like to use a small amount of acetone on a cotton ball and wipe any excess dust or debris off my nails.

From here we move into the base coat. With gel polish the color is sandwiched between the base and top coat. IMPORTANT: when applying any gel polish: base, color or top coat you want to make sure that it’s in THIN even coats. The biggest thing I learned with doing this is that you can always add more thin coats to make the nail opaque. If you start with a thick uneven coat it will cure wrong and bubble and become a hot mess. I actually made this mistake one of the first few times I was applying polish and it looked terrible! I ended up taking off my polish a few days later and starting over.

When I cure my base coat and all of my color coats there after I usually do 30 seconds under the light. Any tutorial you follow will tell you to follow the instructions on the polish but when you have a UV/LED light it’s hard to determine which is actually which! But I have found for me with these polished 30 seconds on base coat and following color coats seems to work really well!

Now for color. When I was saying thin coats above I wasn’t kidding! this is the first coat of pink that I applied and cured for 30 seconds.

This photo is the difference between coat 3 and coat 2. My pinky and ring finger have a third coat applied while my middle and index finger only have the second coat. You can see the difference in opacity. I ended up doing four coats in total with this light pink to get the color I wanted.

This next photo is after I added the final coat of color which was the glitter- 018 Sparkle Grapefruit. This glitter is very subtle and adds a really nice sparkle to the nails without being a full on glitter! (Please excuse my terrible application! I was looking light and was trying to multi task)

One thing you should remember to do as well is always clean off any polish that you get on your cuticles because it can lead to the polish starting to lift and peel prematurely. I am a very bad example of this. (This is me rushing through my nails because I waited to the last minute to do them and get photos for this post.)

Finally it’s time for top coat! The Aimeili Top Coat is a no wipe top coat which means that you don’t have the sticky layer that is left over once you have cured the top coat. I really like this because it means I am ready to go and don’t have an additional step to preform. I also really like this because I can do my own version of chrome nails with some of the pigments I have. Also with the top coat you want to make sure that you get a nice even layer and try to wipe off as much of the excess off of your cuticle as possible because again if you cure with it extending onto your skin this could lead to lifting and peeling or premature chipping of your polish.

And with that I have a nice fresh set of gel nails that I’ve done all by myself!

I waited until the next day to get nice photos in the day light of how these turned out. My nail shape is all sorts of crazy just because of having brittle nails but I really love the simplicity of this pretty pink with glitter! I really love being able to do my own nails and I can’t wait for my nails to be fully healthy again so that I can get them to grow longer and stronger and be fore fun to paint!

I hope you enjoyed this little DIY. Remember all of the products I use are linked in my Amazon Haul post. And again I am not a professional. I only do this for fun and like the fact that I am saving money by doing my own nails at home! Let me know if you want to see a post on how I use nail tips for a more acrylic look!

Thank you for stopping by and keep an eye on what might be up around the curve!

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